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FITCHBURG -- At 92 years old, Sarah (Zichelle) Capodagli hasn't missed a Fourth of July Parade in the city yet.

At the age of 17, she was asked by the United Italian American Societies of Fitchburg to represent the Statue of Liberty on the float it entered into the 1939 Fourth of July Parade.

"It was quite an experience," she said Wednesday afternoon in her Atlantic Avenue home.

Capodagli said she was proud to portray Lady Liberty, and that it made her feel important and patriotic to be among the large number of beautiful floats and marching bands, including a children's band her younger sister, Rita, played in.

Back then, the parade route -- which she grew up on, living on Summer Street -- was much different than it is today, she said. Now, the parade begins at Summer Street, heads up Main Street and ends in the Upper Common. In that time, Capodagli said, the parade started by the Upper Common and went down Main Street, onto Water Street, over the Fifth Street bridge, left onto Summer Street and back to Moran Square.

To stay standing still for that whole time, the float she rode had a stand built on it that she was strapped to, with an extension to hold up her arm holding the torch.

"The parade was an exciting and inspirational event for the city, and people turned out by the thousands and lined the streets everywhere," Capodagli said.

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Joseph Capodagli was in the crowd that day in 1939, and had relatives who were visiting from New York just to see the parade.

"He said to them, he says, 'You know, I'm going to marry that girl one day,' " she said with a twinkle in her eye.

And six years later, he did -- but he didn't tell her how he'd felt then until after they were already married.

Joseph Capodagli, a World War II veteran of the Army Air Corps and commissioner of veterans services in Fitchburg for 32 years, died in 2002 at the age of 89, after 57 years of marriage.

When Sarah Capodagli's parents came to America in early 1900s from Lacedonia, Italy, they came through Ellis Island, and were greeted by the Statue of Liberty -- which will reopen to the public on the holiday after months of cleanup from Superstorm Sandy.

Though named Serafina at birth by her parents, Capodagli took on the Americanized name Sarah at a young age. As a first-grader at the former Nolan School, her teacher asked her what her name was, and when she replied "Serafina," the teacher said, "Your name is Sarah," she said.

"I kept that name all my life," Capodagli said.

She said her mother always spoke Italian at home and Capodagli herself can still speak Italian to this day, but her four children never really picked it up.

SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / JOHN LOVE
"It was quite an experience," Sarah Capodagli, 92, recalls of her day as Lady Liberty in Fitchburg's 1939 Fourth of July parade. Her future husband was watching.

"I think the feeling back then was to become Americanized quickly," said her son, Peter Capodagli. "I think the feeling was you would do better if you did that, if you participated in American society."

COURTESY PHOTO
STAR-SPANGLED MEMORIES: Sarah (Zichelle) Capodagli, then 17, carried the torch of freedom as the Statue of Liberty through the streets of Fitchburg during the city's 1939 Fourth of July parade.

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